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1846 
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THE 



CHARACTER OF THE GENTLEMAN 



AN ADDRESS 



TO THE 



STUDENTS OF MIAMI UNIVERSITY, 



ON THE EVENING BEFORE COMMENCEMENT DAY, IN THE 
MONTH OF AUGUST, 1846. 



/ 
v/ 

BY FRANCIS LIEBER, 

PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND ECONOMY IN SOUTH CAROLINA 

COLLEGE ; AUTHOR OF POLITICAL ETHICS ; PRINCIPLES OF 

INTERPRETATION IN LAW AND POLITICS ; ESSAYS 

ON LABOUR AND PROPERTY, &C. &C. 




CINCINNATI : 

J. A. JAMES, WALNUT STREET 
MDCCCXLVI. 



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%ky> 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



MIAMI UNIVERSITY, August 13, 1846. 
My Dear Sir: 

I have to express to you, on behalf of the young gentlemen of the Univer- 
sity, at whose request your excellent Address of last evening was delivered, their 
sense of the obligation under which you have laid them, by your kind compli- 
ance with their invitation, and to request that you will add a further favour to 
that already conferred, by furnishing a copy for the press. It affords me great 
pleasure to make this communication, and I take the liberty to express the hope 
that you will accede to this request. 

I am, dear sir, with great respect and esteem, yours, &c. 

E. D. MacMASTER. 
Frajtcis Lieber, Esq., LL. D. 



Mx Dear Sir: 

It gives me much pleasure that the young gentlemen of Miami Univer- 
sity consider the subject, on which I have written an Address to them, of suffi« 
cient importance to wish the publication of my thoughts on it. My Address is 
entirely at their service, and I beg you to express to them my best acknowledg- 
ments for the kindly and favourable feelings with which they view my imperfect 
composition. 

Accept the assurance of my highest regard, and believe me, 

My dear Sir, your very obedient, 

FRANCIS LIEBER. 
To the Rev. Dr. MacMaster, President of Miami University. 



THE 



CHARACTER OF THE GENTLEMAN 



Young Gentlemen: 

The very word by which I have the pleasure of address- 
ing you, will form the subject-matter of the address, which, in 
the spirit of great kindness you have called upon me, unknown 
to you as I am, to deliver on this festive day. When I was 
obliged to decline the honour, because uncertain whether I 
would be able to meet you at the appointed time, you have 
with equal goodness permitted me to send you in writing those 
remarks which I might have spoken under more favourable 
circumstances. I thus find much increased the difficulty of 
addressing those between whom and myself no personal ac- 
quaintance has yet subsisted. My words will be conveyed to 
you without the natural aid of the author's own utterance; 
and, whilst I address you under peculiar disadvantages, I have 
been obliged to select my subject under others equally great. 
My foot has never yet trodden the soil of your State; I am 
unacquainted with what may be peculiar to your society or 
characteristical of your institution, and stand in danger of lead- 
ing you to the unmarked wastes of flat and unprofitable gener- 
alities. I beg you, therefore, to bear with me, should you find 
my subject not sufficiently appropriate for this occasion, for 
which I have selected the Character of the Gentleman, as a 
subject appearing to me useful to be discussed before young 
men who, in receiving a liberal education, are preparing them- 
selves for the most important walks of practical life. 

Young as you are, you must have observed, that the term 
gentleman, indeed, is used in common intercourse almost un- 
meaningly ; but that it has also come to designate a character of 



high attributes, and is employed on occasions apparently much 
differing in their nature. It is made use of as an incentive in 
education at home and training at school, with those who 
are yet sporting through the age of boyhood. Dr. Thomas 
Arnold, that solid scholar, wise Christian, fervent lover of lib- 
erty and great schoolmaster, pronounced it as his highest aim 
to make his scholars feel like Christian gentlemen; and an 
English writer, to express most strongly his admiration of 
Plato's works, says that they are pervaded by a spirit, almost, 
of a Christian gentleman; an officer of the army or navy may 
be tried for "conduct unbecoming a gentleman," a charge ruinous 
to his career, if the court pronounces him guilty*" on the word 
of a gentleman " is considered among men of character equiv- 
alent to a solemn asseveration, and the charge "he is no gentle- 
man" as one of the most degrading that can be brought against 
a man of education. You would understand me at once as 
being desirous of conveying a grave idea, were I to say that 
Socrates, though condemned by vulgar and ferocious envy, 
died, passionless, a philosopher and a gentleman, or that Charles 
the First, after having long dispensed with veracity, and often 
stooped to unworthy practices, demeaned himself, during his 
trial and on the scaffold, like a gentleman. 

We naturally ask, then, what is the meaning of this compre- 
hensive term, and, is there anything substantial in the character 
which it designates, or is it an idol arbitrarily set up by fickle 
Fashion, beside morality, perhaps above religion? Has it 
become a caricature, however innocent at first, or ought it to 
be well known and attentively cultivated ? 

I must not detain you with the well known etymologies of 
the word, given among others by Gibbon, nor with its meaning 
in the English law. Blackstone's Commentaries, or any proper 
book of reference, will speedily satisfy the curious on this point. 
Let us rather endeavour to ascertain what is meant at present 
by those, who choose their words with care and knowledge, 
when they use the term gentleman in its highest acceptation. I 
believe it signifies that character which is distinguished by strict 
honour, self-possession, forbearance, generous as well as refined 
feelings and polished deportment,— a character to which all mean- 
ness, explosive irasibility and peevish fretfulness are alien ; to 



which, consequently, veracity, courage, both moral and physical, 
dignity, self-respect, a studious avoidance of offending others, and 
liberality are habitual and have become natural. We always 
connect the ideas of honour, polish, collectedness of mind and 
liberal disposition with the word gentleman, and feel that its 
antagonistic characters are — if you permit me, in the spirit of 
philosophical inquiry, to use words which otherwise find not 
easily a befitting place in a gentlemanly discourse — the clown, 
the coward, the liar, braggart, swaggerer, bully, ruffian and the 
blackguard, according to that peculiar attribute of the gentle- 
man, the opposite to which may be prominent in the antagonis- 
tic character. 

If I use here the word polish, I mean, indeed, that urbanity 
which, in most cases, is the effect of a careful education and of 
choice intercourse, or consists in high breeding, but which, 
nevertheless, may result from native qualities so strong that 
subsequent cultivation may become comparatively unimportant. 
There are native gentlemen, as there are native heroes, bards, 
orators or diplomatists. Whoever has read Captain Wilson's 
account of the Pelew Islands* will concede that the King Abba 
Thulle and his brothers, especially Raa Kook, were, in all their 
nudity and unacquaintance with white men, as delicately-feel- 
ing and complete gentlemen as can be found in any nation 
of long-planted civilization; and I have at this moment an old, 
now departed, negro slave in my mind, whom I have never 
seen otherwise than obliging, polite, anticipating, self-possessed, 
dignified and forbearing — in short, a gentleman in his humble 
sphere. As a matter of course, this can be by way of excep- 
tion only ; but the more difficult the exception, the more hon- 
ourable is the instance. 

The character of the gentleman produces an equality of 
social claims and supersedes rank, office, or title. It establishes 
a republic of intercourse, as we speak of the republic of letters. 
Nowhere appears, and indeed can appear, this fact more stri- 
king, than in the messroom of a British regiment, where the 
colonel and the ensign, who, under arms, stand in the relation 

* Account of the Pelew Islands, composed from the Journals of Captain 
Henry "Wilson, wrecked on those Islands in the ship Antelope in 1783, by 
George Keate, Esq., 4th edition, London, 1789. 



of the strictest military discipline, meet on the common ground 
of gentlemanlike equality, and freely accord to each other all 
the privileges to which every member of the great common- 
wealth of comity is fairly entitled. 

I feel induced to give you the translation of a passage which 
I found in a valuable French work, entitled British India in 
1843, by Count Warren. The author, a Frenchman, was edu- 
cated at Paris, obtained a lieutenancy in a British royal regi- 
ment in India and served there during nine years. My trans- 
lation is literal, and you will remember that the original was 
written by a Frenchman — a consideration which will give 
peculiar force to some parts, and induce you to make allowance 
for others on the score of French vivacity. Count Warren, 
speaking of his colonel and the aid-de-camp of his regiment, 
says : 

"I found in those two men a type essentially English, and, 
at the same time, a degree of perfection, to which it is, perhaps, 
not given to Frenchmen to attain. The reader must have seen 
that I was not disposed to view the defects of English society 
with too indulgent an eye; I do not compare it, for a moment, 
with ours, as to engaging qualities — urbanity, kindness, simpli- 
city, and as to all the delights which can render life happy, such 
as grace, bonhomie and charming manners; but as we do not find 
the diamond in gold and silver mines, but in the layers of 
crumbled rocks and coarse sand, so do we find the most perfect 
type of man buried deep in the rude elements of our neigh- 
bours; the perfect English gentleman is the Phoenix of the 
human species. There is wanting in Frenchmen, to attain to 
this height, nothing but a more elevated and intense sentiment 
of personal dignity, a more religious respect for the divine part 
which the Almighty has vouchsafed to men. There are few, I 
might say, there is not one among us, who is a hero before his 
valet-de-chambre or his most intimate friend. However excel- 
lent a Frenchman may be in society, before strangers or in the 
presence of ladies, his very bonhomie causes him at once to 
lower himself, so soon as he is alone with the friend of his 
heart, the companion of his studies, the confidant or messenger 
of his first follies. This results, I shall be answered, from an 
excess of two good qualities — from our absence of affectation 



and the gaiety so characteristic of the French temper; but we 
have also generally the defects of these two qualities — an 
inclination to let ourselves go without restraint, impurity of 
thought and conversation,* exaggeration and harliquinadefi 
which we are astonished to meet with at every moment in the 
gravest men and best minds. The perfect English gentleman 
never follows solely his impulses, and never lowers himself. 
He carries conscientiousness and the remembrance of his 
dignity into the smallest details of life. His temper never 
betrays him, for it is of the same character with his exterior; 
his house might be of glass; every one of his acts can bear the 
broadest light and defy criticism. From this we see that the 
individual whom we have delineated is not a product purely 
indigenous; he must undergo several transplantations, respire 
the air of the continent and especially of France, in order to 
attain to perfect maturity, and to get rid of certain qualities 
inherent in the native soil — disdainfulness, prejudices, etc. But 
if education, circumstances, and travel, have favoured this 
development, it is of him, above all, that we may say, he is the 
lord of creation." 

So far our author, who is right in calling the character desig- 
nated the gentleman a type peculiarly Anglican. It belongs to 
the English race; nor is it long since it has been developed in 
its present and important form. Lord Campbell, in his Lives 
of the Lord Chancellors of England, says that one of the 
earliest instances of the word gentleman being used in the 
modern sense, was when in 1640 the Commons, unwilling to 
vote supplies to Charles the First, before settling their grievances, 
although the King had promised to give due consideration to 
the latter, were told by Lord Keeper Finch, that they should 
freely vote the money, for "they had the word of a king, and 
not only so, but the word of a gentleman. "% But so occurs a 
passage in Shakspeare, « Sir, the king is a noble gentleman," 
and Pistol calls himself, in Henry the Fifth, " as good a gen- 
tleman as the Emperor." The passage, however, in which the 
poet seems to use the word most strikingly in the modern sense, 



* Grivois in the original, which is, literally translated, smuttiness. 
■\Harliquinade is in the original; I could not translate it by buffoonery. 
tSee note to page 561, vol. II, of Lives of the Lord Chancellors. 

2 



10 

is that in which Antonio, a merchant, is called " a true gentle- 
man."* Yet it cannot be denied, that throughout Shakspeare's 
works — that surprising panorama of human life — the word 
gentleman is almost exclusively used either for nobleman, or a 
man of the higher classes with polished and graceful manners; 
or its meaning is in a state of transition between the knight of 
high and sensitive honour, and the modern gentleman; but it 
hardly ever designates the true modern gentleman, although 
the word occurs nearly five hundred times, according to the 
laborious concordance, for which the public owe very sincere 
thanks to our countrywoman, Mrs. Clarke. 

You will, of course, not misunderstand the position I have 
advanced, that the present type of the gentleman is of modern 
development and Anglican origin, as if 1 meant that there are 
no true gentlemen in other countries, or that there have been 
none in antiquity. All I can wish to convey is, that with other 
races, and at other periods the character of the gentleman has 
not developed itself as a national type and as a readily 
understood and universally acknowledged aggregate of certain 
substantial and lofty attributes; nor is there now in any other 
language a word corresponding in meaning to the word gen- 
tleman, though all of Latin origin have words of the same 
etymology. 

The ancient Dherma Sastra of the Hindoos ordain, that a 
man who loses a law-suit, shall not be liable to punishment, if 
in leaving the court he murmurs and openly rails against the 
judge — a law, it will be acknowledged, exclusively dictated by 
a spirit of gentlemanly forbearance. When Lycurgus treated 
Alcander, who had put out one of his eyes, with forbearance 
and even confidence, he proved himself a gentleman, as he did 
towards his nephew Charilaus, under the most tempting circum- 
stances. When Caesar, after the battle at Pharsalia, burnt the 
papers of Pompey, which might have disclosed to him the 
names of all his personal and most dangerous enemies, he 
acted as a gentleman; if indeed, he did not throw a secret 
glance at them, which, from the general tenour of his life, I 
think we have no right to suppose. Alexander began his career 



* Merchant of Venice, III, 4. 



11 

as a highbred gentleman, and could never wholly disguise that 
Nature had intended him for one; but, what with withering 
absolute power and riotous intemperance, she was robbed 
of her fair handiwork. 

Yet we need only remember the scurrilous invectives with 
which even the first orators did not think it beneath them to 
assail their opponents in the Roman senate or the Athenian 
ecclesia, to be aware that, in our times, a member would be 
instantly declared out of order and put down, were he to make 
use of similar language and resort to equal personalities, even 
in assemblies in which, to the detriment of public tone and pub- 
lic service, deviations from parliamentary decorum no longer 
form rare exceptions. Falsehood did not disgrace with the 
ancients, as it does infallibly with modern free nations. 

It does not appear difficult to account for the fact that the 
peculiar character which we call the gentleman, should be of 
comparatively late development, and have shown itself first fully 
developed with the English people. Each of the various con- 
stituents of this character required peculiar social conditions to 
come to maturity. The middle ages were at times — though 
not so often as is frequently supposed — sufficiently favourable 
for the development of chivalrous honour under the united 
influence of an active love of individual independence, and 
a softening reverence for the softer sex. But one of the perva- 
ding characteristics of those angry times was that of exclusive 
privilege, contradistinguished from a broad acknowledgment of 
the rights of all and a willing recognition of humanity in every 
one. Medioeval liberty was always a chartered one — extorted 
by him who had the power to extort, and grudged by him who 
had not the power to withhold. Modern liberty, on the con- 
trary, is constitutional, that is, national, recognizing rights in all, 
covering the land, and compassing the power-holder himself. 
This exclusiveness and the constant feuds and appeals to the 
sword prevented the growth of that collected calmness, ready 
forbearance, and kind reciprocity, which we have acknowledged 
aa necessary elements of the modern gentleman. Later pe- 
riods, especially in the progress of manners in France, were 
propitious to the development of refinement and a polished de- 
portment ; but it was at the cost of morality, and took place 



12 

under a daily growing despotism, which in its very nature is ad- 
verse to mutual reliance and acknowledgment, to candour and 
dignity of character, however favourable it may be to stateli- 
ness of carriage. Veracity is a plant which grows in abund- 
ance on the soil of civil liberty alone. The character of the 
gentleman, such as we now know and cherish it, was not 
therefore fairly developed, before the popular institutions and 
a broader civil liberty in England added a more general con- 
sciousness of rights, and their acknowledgment in others, a 
general esteem for candour, self-respect and dignity, together 
with native English manliness and calmness, to the spirit of 
chivalry which, in some degree, was still traditional in the aris- 
tocracy, and to the -courtesy of manners which perhaps had 
been adopted from abroad. The character of the cavalier was 
essentially aristocratic; that of the gentleman is rather of a 
popular cast, or of a civic nature, and shows in this, likewise, 
that it belongs to modern times. The cavalier distinguished 
himself by his dress — by plume, lace and cut ; the gentleman 
shuns external distinction, and shows his refinement within the 
limits of plain attire. The character of the gentleman includes 
whatever was valuable in the cavalier and the earlier knight, 
but he stands above him, even with reference to that very 
element which constituted a chief attribute of the cavalier — to 
honour. Untarnished honour depends in a great measure upon 
truthfulness, and it is a cheering fact, that the world has be- 
come far more candid within the last two centuries. The de- 
tails of the history of domestic intercourse, of traffic, of judicial 
transactions and bribes, of parliamentary procedures, of high 
politics and international affairs, bear us out in this position, 
however painfully we may even now far too frequently be 
forced to observe infractions of the sacred law of plain dealing, 
religious candour and gentlemanly veracity. In ascribing 
greater veracity to the people of free countries, in modern 
times, I may appear to gainsay other and distinguished 
writers. Montaigne actually says, that we moderns punish the 
charge of a lie so severely, which the ancients did not, because 
we lie habitually so much more, and must save appearances. 
But Montaigne wrote in France, at a very bad period, and we 
may well ask besides, whether antiquity with all its details 



13 

was vivid in his mind when he penned that passage. If the 
position I have advanced be wrong, I have at any rate not 
hastily come to it. 1 am convinced that there is at present 
more truth in the intercourse of men, although we speak and 
write less bluntly. Who has studied history without meeting, 
occasionally with acts of deception which we find it difficult 
to understand, because public opinion would not suffer them, 
and would utterly disgrace their authors at present? 

We must be prepared to meet with corresponding caricatures 
of the many high attributes of the true gentleman, and with 
mimicking impersonations of vicious dispositions. The saint's 
counterfeit is the hypocrite ; the patriot is caricatured by the 
demagogue ; the thrifty husband by the miser ; the frank 
companion by the gossip ; the chaste by the prude, and the 
conscientious by the pedantic; the sincere reformer by the 
reckless Jacobin ; and the cautious statesman or firm be- 
liever in the necessity of progressive improvement, distrust- 
ing abrupt changes, by the idolater of the past and the Chinese 
worshipper of the forefathers. In a similar manner we find 
the sensitive honour of the gentleman counterfeited in the 
touchy duellist ; his courage by the arrant bully ; his calmness 
of mind by supercilious or stolid indifference, or a fear of be- 
traying the purest emotions; his refinement of feeling, by sen- 
timentality or affectation ; his polished manners by a punctilious 
observance of trivial forms ; his ready compliance with con- 
ventional forms in order to avoid notice or giving offence to 
others, or his natural habit of moving in those forms which 
have come to be established among the accomplished, by the 
silly hunter after new fashions, or a censurable and enfeebling 
love of approbation; his liberality, by the spendthrift; his dig- 
nity and self-respect by conceit or a dogged resistance to ac- 
knowledge error or wrong; his candour by an ill-natured 
desire of telling unwelcome truths; his want of irritability by 
incapacity of enthusiasm, and his composure by egotism. But 
these distorted reflections from a deforming mirror do not de- 
tract from the real worth and the important attributes of the 
well-proportioned original ; nor can it be said that this charac- 
ter has been set up as a purely ethical model in spite of re- 
ligion. 1 am convinced that it was possible to conceive this 



14 

character in its fulness, only by the aid of Christianity, and 
believe — I say it with bowing reverence — that in him to whom 
we look for the type of every moral perfection, we also find 
the perfect type of that character which occupies our attention. 

It seems then plain, that in placing before us the character of 
the gentleman as one of the models of excellence, we do not 
allow the nimble hand of neomaniac fashion to substitute a 
puny idol, decked with tinsel imitations of substantial gold, for 
the true and lasting patterns of virtue and religion ; nor can 
you fail to perceive the vast practical importance of an active, 
ready, inward gentleman! iness, from which a gentlemanlike 
conduct as naturally results, as the spontaneous effect from any 
living, healthy organism. 

In all spheres of our lives there occur many acts of so com- 
plex a nature, that, if they are submitted to a long process of 
reasoning, which possibly may appear the more impartial, the 
more heartlessly it is undertaken, they will allow of a perplex- 
ing number of arguments, for and against, of bewildering pre- 
cedents on either side, and of distinctions more embarrassing 
than unravelling, so that in the end we see our way less clearly 
than at the beginning — acts, from which, nevertheless, a mind 
instinct with genuine gentlemanliness will shrink at once, as 
being of doubtful candour, dangerous to honour, of suspicious 
honesty, or inclining to what is illiberal or undignified. No 
merchant or tradesman, no advocate, statesman, teacher or 
minister — no citizen in whatever circle he may move — none of 
you in your preparatory spheres, can avoid being called upon 
promptly to decide in cases of this nature. Acts, somewhat 
tinctured with what we would call unhandsome, or slightly 
tainted with what may be mean, cannot always be distinctly 
discerned as such by the purely reasoning faculties, and all these 
acts are nevertheless dangerous, because they are infusions of 
impurity into our soul, where nothing is at rest, but every thing, 
good or evil, is in constant perfusing and assimilating activity — a 
psychological law which is subject to far fewer exceptions, if 
any, than the corresponding law of assimilation of matter in 
the animal body. 

History is full of these instances; daily life surrounds us 
with them, and although the pure principles as well as precepts 



15 

of religion are invaluable, and of primordial importance to all 
ethic vitality, and for which indeed you can find no substitute, 
search where you may, yet a keen and instinctive sense and 
glowing love of honour, watchful and prompt self-respect, and 
habitual recoiling from what is low and vulgar and base in 
thought, deed or manner, form an active moral co-efficient, or, 
if I may say so, an additional faculty quickly to receive im- 
pressions upon which religious conscientiousness shall decide 
and work. 

Young gentlemen, a clear and vigorous intellect is in morals 
as important as in any other sphere of action, but the general 
state of the soul, and the frame of mind are of greater impor- 
tance, and no one will deny that gentlemanship, taken in the 
sense in which the word has been used here, contributes to a 
pure general frame of mind. Forgetting the primary impor- 
tance of the purity of the soul, and the belief that the morality 
of human acts is ascertained by a minute weighing of their 
possible effects upon others, and not upon the actor himself, or 
by subtle definitions of the millions of acts which may occur 
in our lives, is one of the radical and besetting vices of the 
Jesuistical casuists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 
of an Escobar, Sa Busenbaum, Bauny, Swarez, and innumer- 
able other doctores graves, as they were styled by their own 
order* — a vice which ultimately led them to rear their amazing 
system of stupendous turpitude. 

It will be scarcely necessary here to mention the question 
unfortunately still at times moved, whether a man be safe if he 
make the law of the land the sole standard of his moral con- 
duct. To put this question shows the utmost confusion of 
morals and politics, of the righteous and the legal, of the law 
written in our heart, and the statute printed in the law book; 
of the commandments of virtue, the resistance to which must 
remain possible, lest we should lose our moral character, and 
the ordinances of civil authority which must be enforced and 
complied with, though it be but because a penalty threatens the 
transgressor; of conscience and the constable; of the codes by 
which fellow men judge a few acts of ours here beneath, and 



* Ellendorf, a Catholic priest and writer against their morality and polity, men- 
tions three hundred. 



16 

that one code by which our Maker judges our whole soul 
above. But it seems to be certain, that comprehensive as this 
error be, a clear perception of the obligations of the gentleman 
is one of the safeguards against falling into it. There are 
millions of actions which a gentleman cannot find the heart to 
perform, although the law of the land would permit them, and 
ought to permit them, lest an intermeddling despotism should 
stifle ail freedom of action. Political and positive laws are not 
intended to be a substitute for our conscience. 

Whichever field, young gentlemen, you may choose for your 
future labours in practical life, it is necessary that you carry the 
standard of the gentleman with you, and that now, ere the 
temptations of busy life beset you, you fix it firmly in your 
soul by daily repeated practice. 

Those of you who intend to become divines, must remember 
that the whole character and meaning of the minister's calling 
is founded upon a constant intercourse with men, whom he has 
to teach, to guide, to save — an intercourse depending for its 
usefulness upon the confidence reposed in his sincerity of faith, 
purity of morals, and prudence, and honourable bearing. You 
will have no other power to support you. The government 
does not build your churches. If a congregation are convinced 
that their pastor is a true Christian, a learned divine, and a 
perfect gentleman, he has the strongest hold on their confi- 
dence in him. He must not forget that the pulpit gives him a 
periodical and frequent opportunity of speaking to large num- 
bers without reply. This is power, and requires, like every 
power, among other things, to be wielded in a gentlemanlike 
manner, if its possessor desires to secure himself against his own 
abuse of it. If, on the other hand, the divine descends into the 
arena of controversy, which, however undesirable, it does not 
always depend upon him to avoid, he can hardly inflict a 
severer injury upon his sacred cause, than by exhibiting to the 
world, and calling forth in his adversaries, bitterness of spirit, 
unfairness of argument, or passionate, gross and abusive lan- 
guage, in short the conduct "unbecoming a gentleman." The 
great cause of the Reformation was immeasurably injured by 
the undignified and even scurrilous character of many contro- 
versial writings on both sides, in a degree which makes us still 



17 

bear the sad consequences, and which greatly interfered with 
the diffusion of truth over Europe. Let no one persuade you 
that this vehemence, as that ungentlemanly bitterness and rude- 
ness is sometimes called by way of euphemism, was necessary 
against violent enemies, and according to the spirit of the 
times. It is as bigoted as to say that so false-hearted and blood- 
thirsty a despot as Henry the Eighth, was necessary to break 
up the convents. No great and enduring cause stands in need 
of low or iniquitous means ; and every low, vulgar or heartless 
word engenders two and three in reply. That which is great 
and true is best promoted by means high and pure. 

Others of you will enter the profession of the law. They 
will avoid many dangers incident to this profession by a loyal 
adhesion to the character of the gentleman. The advocate, in 
our country and in England, enjoys peculiarly high privileges, 
that is power. Probably it is not desirable or feasible to restrah. / 
its abuse in all cases; at any rate, as matters stand, he can 
frequently abuse it without the probability of being restrained. 
It becomes, therefore, the more necessary that he restrain him- 
self. I do not now speak of that in a lawyer's practice, which 
is censurable upon the broad and immutable principles of 
morality, and from which the profession of the advocate does 
no more absolve than any other calling. What a degradation 
of the lawyer, if, like the Japanese wife, he were incapable of 
doing wrong. Nor do I speak of "those too common faults," 
as the great lawyer, Sir Matthew Hale, said, "of mis-represent- 
ing evidence, quoting precedents or books falsely, or asserting 
anything confidently by which ignorant juries or weak judges 
are too often wrought upon."* I believe these trespasses are 
now far rarer. Nor shall 1 dwell upon the fact that a gentle- 
manly spirit must needs be a safeguard against becoming a 
" leguleius quidam cautus et acutus, preeco actionum, cantor 
formularum, auceps syllabarum."t The pettifogger and the 
legicrepa, as the low Latin had it, are the opposites to the 
gentleman advocate — one of the finest types of the citizen of a 
free country. Nor need I mention that it is incumbent upon a 
judge to move scrupulously within the limits of the gentleman, 



* Burnet's Life of Sir Matthew Hale, p. 72. 
f Cicero, in Oratore, fragm. ap. Augustin I, 3 contra Acad. c. 7. 
3 



18 

if it be incumbent upon any one in the wide range of civilized 
society. I pass over all this as plainly obvious; but I must 
mention to you, inexperienced as you are, that lawyers not 
unfrequently here and in England, allow their zeal for the 
client or the prosecution to make them visibly swerve from the 
path of the gentleman. However close and searching your ex- 
amination of a witness may be, you are bound by all the laws of 
morality, by all the principles of high-mindedness and the very 
meaning of the institution of the advocate itself, to behave as 
gentlemen toward him whom the laws of your society place for a 
time in an irksome situation, and make dependent upon you. 
Let me relate an occurrence which happened not long ago, as a 
warning to you. In the year 1840, a man named Courvoisier, 
murdered Lord Russell. His counsel received a full confession 
from the prisoner twenty -four hours before the trial. The barris- 
ter stated the fact to the judge, who told him " to do his best," 
according to custom. And what did he do, who seems first to 
have doubted the propriety of defending a confessed criminal? 
He presented one of the witnesses, a Mrs. Priolans, a woman 
of unblemished character, who kept a respectable boarding 
house, as having perjured herself, and keeping a house of the 
worst character; he called the police-men ruffians, a gang of 
blockheads, panting for rewards, though he knew that the 
police no longer accept of rewards, and treated Courvoisier's 
female servant most unwarrantably.* I abstain from giving 
you the name of him who was guilty of conduct so shameless; 
for, he is yet living and may repent. We hope he may. His 
conduct is so revolting, that ingenuous youth may ask, why I 
relate an occurrence so obviously criminal, that it stands on a 
par with any other criminal deviation from the path of recti- 
tude? I do it, because this barrister is one of no common 
standing, and of established name, who seems to have fallen 
into this grievous offence from an incorrect view of the duties 
of a counsel, and because he could not have fallen into it, had 
he felt like a gentleman. If advocates were the only persons 
on earth who stand absolved from the obligations of truth, 
morality and justice, society would have placed itself under a 



* I follow in this relation the papers and reviews, such as the Edinburgh, of the 
time. 



; 



19 

most degrading and absurd despotism, and their whole order 
ought speedily to be abolished. Yet it is a fact that the institu- 
tion of the advocate exists everywhere along with civil liberty, 
and is indispensable to it;* therefore, let them be gentlemen. 

The prosecuting officer, on the other hand, must not forget 
that the indicted person is placed in his power, which he may 
abuse, seriously, scandalously and in an ungentlemanly manner, 
as history most amply shows; that the prisoner is yet to be 
tried; that the object of the trial is justice, not to oppress, 
worry or hunt down the prisoner, or to asperse his character so 
foully, that though he may be fully acquitted, his reputation 
may be ruined for life, and that too, perhaps, merely by insinu- 
ations. In the course of your studies you will find instances 
of what I say in Sir Edward Coke and in Bacon — him, who 
would never have been so dreadfully wrecked that he saved 
naught but immortal fame of intellect, had he felt like a gen- 
tleman instead of cringing before a James and fawning upon a 
Buckingham, being ready for their meanest and their darkest 
work. Bacon was void of all dignity. Earl Strafford said 
after his trial for high treason: "Glynne and Maynard have 
used me like advocates, but Palmer and Whitelock like gentle- 
men, and yet left out nothing that was material to be urged 
against me." Does not every one understand at once what he 
meant ? 

Do not believe that you will lastingly promote even your 
worldly interests as lawyers by any infraction of the strictest 
rules of a gentlemanly conduct. Every advocate of experi- 
ence, I venture to say, will tell you that a fairly established 
reputation as gentlemen will be an efficient agent in promoting 
your career as lawyers. 

* I have dwelt on this subject more at length in the chapter on the Judge, Jury 
and Advocate in Political Ethics. The enemies of civil liberty know well the 
importance of the institution of the advocate for civil liberty. Archbishop Laud 
and Earl Strafford show, in their correspondence, the most inveterate hatred 
against lawyers, without whom, they confess to each other, it would be easy to 
establish the King's "absolute" sovereignty, their adored idol; and Duclos 
(page 335, vol. 76, of Collect des Memoires, second series,) says that the foreign 
ministers applauded, in the name of their masters, the regent, duke of Orleans, 
for having repressed ces legistes, (in 1718,) that is, having incarcerated three 
presidents of the Parliament. Laud and Strafford, however, ought not to have 
forgotten those lawyers, who, as Audley, successor to Sir Thomas More, urged 
it as a claim to promotion, " had willingly incurred all manner of infamy to 
serve the government." 



20 

Some of you, no doubt, will become editors of newspapers. 
The journal has become a prominent agent of modern civiliza- 
tion, and the editor holds great power in comparison with his 
fellow-citizens. He daily speaks to many; he can reiterate; 
he is supported by the weight which, however unfounded the 
opinion may be, is attached by the minds of almost all men to 
every thing printed, over that which is merely spoken; and he 
is sure that the contradiction of what he states will not run 
precisely in the same channels, through which the first assertion 
was conveyed. All this, and the consideration that the daily 
repeated tone in which a paper publishes or discusses the many 
occurrences of the day produces a sure effect upon the general 
tone of the community, ought to warn an editor that if the 
obligations of a gentleman are binding upon any one, they 
are indubitably so upon him. The evil influence which 
some papers in our country, very active, but very ungentleman- 
like, have already exercised upon our community cannot be 
denied. Let me in addition single out but one specific applica- 
tion of the general obligation, that the editor ought always to 
conduct his paper as a gentleman, an instance of more frequent 
occurrence in our country than in others — I mean the unau- 
thorized publication of private letters, private conversations, 
and altogether, the exposure of strictly private affairs, before 
the public. I was obliged to mention this palpable infraction 
of a gentlemanly conduct; but it is so palpable that, being once 
mentioned, it is unnecessary to say one word more about it. 
That the universal obligation of veracity is most emphatically 
binding upon the editor is evident, but it does not belong exclu- 
sively to the subject of gentlemanship. The subject of veracity 
is as general, comprehensive, and elemental, in the moral world 
and all human life, as that of light is in all physical science 
and the life of nature. 

A most important subject yet remains for our consideration, — 
the character of the gentleman with reference to politics or the 
public life of the citizen; but I have detained you already so much 
beyond the time during which I expected to put your patience 
to a test, that I am constrained to limit myself to a hasty sketch 
of a very few subjects only connected with that immediately 
in hand. 



21 

The greater the liberty is which we enjoy in any sphere of 
life, the more binding, necessarily, becomes the obligation of 
self-restraint, and consequently the more important all the 
rules of action which flow from our reverence for the pure 
character of the gentleman — an importance which is enhanced 
in the present period of our country, because one of its stri- 
king features, if I mistake not, is an intense and general atten- 
tion to rights, without a parallel and equally intense perception 
of corresponding obligations. But right and obligation are 
twins — they are each other's complements and cannot be sev- 
ered without undermining the ethical ground on which we 
stand — that ground on which alone civilization, justice, virtue 
and real progress can build enduring monuments. Right and 
obligation are the warp and the woof of the tissue of man's 
moral, and therefore likewise of man's civil life. Take out 
the one, and the other is in worthless confusion. We must 
return to this momentous principle, the first of all moral gov- 
ernment, and, as fairness and calmness are two prominent 
ingredients in the character of the gentleman, it is plain that 
this reform must be materially promoted by a general diffusion 
of a sincere regard for that character. Liberty, which is noth- 
ing else than the enjoyment of unfettered action, necessarily 
leads to licentiousness without an increased binding power 
within; for liberty offers to man indeed a free choice of action, 
but it cannot absolve him from the duty of choosing what is 
right, fair, liberal, urbane and handsome. 

Where there is freedom of action, no matter in what sphere 
or what class of men, there always have been, and must be, 
parties, whether they be called party, school, sect, or "faction."* 
These will necessarily often act against each other; but, as a 
matter of course, they are not allowed to dispense with any of 
the principles of morality. The principle that everything is 
permitted in politics is so shameless and ruinous for all, that I 
need not dwell upon it here. But there are a great many acts 
which, though it may not be possible to prove them wrong 
according to the strict laws of ethics, nevertheless appear at 
once as unfair, not strictly honourable, or ungentlemanlike, and 



* In the conclave the cardinals used to divide into Spanish, French, etc., 
factions, i. e. parties ; possibly they do still so. 



22 

it is of the utmost importance to the essential prosperity of a 
free country that these acts should not be resorted to; that in 
the minor or higher assemblies and in all party struggles, even 
the intensest, we ought never to abandon the standard of the 
gentleman. It is all important that parties keep in "good hu- 
mour," as lord Clarendon said of the whole country. One 
deviation from fairness, candour, decorum and "fair play," 
begets another and worse in the opponent, and from the kind- 
liest difference of opinion to the fiercest struggle of factions 
sword injiand, is but one unbroken gradual descent, however 
great the distance may be, while few things are surer to forestall 
or arrest this degeneracy than a common and hearty esteem of 
the character of the gentleman. We have in our country a 
noble example of calmness, truthfulness, dignity, fairness and 
urbanity — the constituents of the character which occupies our 
attention, in the father of our country; for Washington, the 
wise and steadfast patriot, was also the high-minded gentleman. 
When the dissatisfied officers of his army informed him that 
they would lend him their support, if he were willing to build 
himself a throne, he knew how to blend the dictates of his 
oath to the commonwealth, and of his patriotic heart, with 
those of a gentlemanly feeling toward the deluded and irritated. 
In the sense in which we take the term here, it is not the least 
of his honours that,through all the trying periods and scenes of 
his remarkable life, the historian and moralist can write him 
down, not only as Washington the Great, not only as Washing- 
ton the Pure, but also as Washington the Gentleman. 

If, in a country of varied and intense political action, in which 
changes and new combinations must often take place, the stand- 
ard of the high-bred gentleman be abandoned, the effect is as 
baneful as that of a prying and falsifying secret police in des- 
potic governments. Mr. Ranke relates, in his History of the 
Popes, that the utmost caution of each to every one prevailed 
in Rome, because no one knew how he might stand with his 
best friend, in a year's time. The same destruction of confi- 
dence and mutual reliance must spread over the land where 
freedom reigns, and a gentlemanly character does not at the 
same time prevail. Lord Shaftesbury, the brilliant, energetic, 
and reckless Alcibiades of English History, rigidly observed the 



23 

rule, during all his tergiversations, "that he never betrayed the 
secrets of a party he had left, or made harsh personal observa- 
tions on the conduct of his old friends ; not only trying to keep 
up a familiar private intercourse with them, but abstaining from 
vindictive reflections upon them in his speeches or his writings."* 
This observance and his Habeas Corpus Act go far with us in 
redeeming the character of this profligate and unprincipled 
statesman. If you wish to see the disastrous effects of a gen- 
eral destruction of confidence and mutual reliance, you must 
study Spanish history ; for I believe that the worst effect of the 
Inquisition has been the total change of the Spanish national 
character. Even dukes became spies, and that noble nation 
was filled with suspicion, in the dark shades of which the char- 
acter of the gentleman cannot prosper. 

I must not omit mentioning, at least, the importance of a gen- 
tlemanly spirit in all international transactions with sister na- 
tions of our race — and even with tribes which follow different 
standards of conduct and morality. Nothing seems to me to 
show more irresistibly the real progress which human society 
has made, than the general purity of judges,t and the improve- 
ment of the whole administration of justice, with the leading 
nations, at least, on the one hand, and the vastly improved mor- 
als of modern international intercourse, holding diplomatic fraud 
and international trickery, bullying, and pettifogging, as no less 
unwise than immoral. History, and that of our own times, es- 
pecially, teaches us that nowhere is the vapouring braggadocio 
more out of place, and the true gentleman more in his proper 
sphere, than in conducting international affairs. Fairness on 
the one hand, and collected self-respect on the other, will fre- 
quently make matters easy, where swaggering taunt, or reckless 
conceit and insulting folly, may lead to the serious misunder- 
standing of entire nations, and a sanguinary end. The firm and 



* Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors. Vol. iii. p. 290. 

j- 1 have lived for long periods in Italy, Germany, France, England and the United 
States, and never heard, in the four last mentioned countries, of a judge suspected 
of bribery. Yet, only a short period has elapsed since satire and comedy teemed 
with the standing subjects of bribed judges, criminal advocates, and irksome wed- 
lock, and Lord Campbell, in the work cited in the preceding note, says, " England, 
during the Stuart reigns, was cursed by a succession of ruffians in ermine, who, 
for the sake of court-favour, violated the principles of law, the precepts of religion 
and the dictates of humanity." 



24 

dignified carriage of our Senate, and the absence of petty pas- 
sion, or vain-gloriousness in the British Parliament, have 
brought the Oregon Question to a fair and satisfactory end — an 
affair which, but a short time ago, was believed by many to be 
involved in difficulties which the sword alone was able to cut 
short. Even genuine personal urbanity in those to whom in- 
ternational affairs are entrusted is very frequently of the last 
importance for a happy ultimate good understanding between 
the mightiest nations. 

We may express a similar opinion with reference to war. 
Nothing mitigates so much its hardships, and few things, de- 
pending upon individuals, aid more in preparing a welcome 
peace, than a gentlemanly spirit in the commanders, officers, 
and, indeed, in all the combatants toward their enemies, when- 
ever an opportunity offers itself. I might give you many stri- 
king proofs, but I observe that my clepsydra is nearly run out. 
Let me merely add, as a fact worthy of notice, that political 
assassination, especially in times of war, was not looked upon 
in antiquity as inadmissible ; that Sir Thomas More mentions 
the assassination of the hostile captain, as a wise measure re- 
sorted to by his Utopians ; that the ambassadors of the British 
Parliament, and later, the Commonwealth-men in exile, were 
picked off by assassination ; while Charles Fox, during the war 
with the French, arrested the man who offered to assassinate 
Napoleon, informed the French government of the fact, and 
sent the man out of the country ;* and Admiral Lord }&. Vin- 
cent, the stern enemy of the French, directed his Secretary to 
write the following answer to a similar offer made by a French 
emigrant : "Lord H7 Vincent has not words to express the de- 
testation in which he holds an assassin."t Fox and Vincent 
acted like Christians and gentlemen. 

I have mentioned two cheering characteristics of our period, 
showing an essential progress in our race. I ought to add a 
third, namely, the more gentlemanly spirit which pervades mod- 
ern penal laws. I am well aware that the whole system of 
punition has greatly improved, because men have made penol- 
ogy a subject of serious reflection, and the utter fallacy of many 



* Pell's Life of Charles James Fox,— p. 592. 

f Tucker, Memoirs of Admiral the Earl if. Vincent, — vol. i. p. 203. 



25 

principles, in which our forefathers seriously believed, has at 
length been exposed. But it is at the same time impossible to 
study the history of penal law without clearly perceiving that 
punishments were formerly dictated by a vindictive ferocity — an 
ungentlemanly spirit of oppression. All the accumulated atro- 
cities heaped upon the criminal, and not unfrequently upon his 
innocent kin, merely because he was what now would gently 
be called " in the opposition/' make us almost hear the enraged 
punisher vulgarly utter; "Now I have you, and you shall see 
how I'll manage you." Archbishop Laud, essentially not a 
gentleman, but a vindictive persecutor of every one who dared 
to differ from his coarse views of State and Church, presided in 
the Star-Chamber, and animated its members when Lord Keep- 
er Coventry pronounced the following sentence on Dr. Alexan- 
der Leighton, a Scottish divine, for slandering Prelacy: " that 
the defendant should be imprisoned in the Fleet during life — 
should be fined ten thousand pounds — and, after being degra- 
ded from holy orders by the high commissioners, should be set 
in the pillory in Westminster — there be whipped — after being 
whipped, again be set in the pillory — have one of his ears cut 
off — have his nose slit — be branded in the face with a double 
S. S., for a Sower of Sedition — afterwards be set in the pillory 
in Cheapside, and there be whipped, and after being whipped, 
again be set in the pillory and have his other ear cut off." The 
whole Council agreed. There was no recommendation to par- 
don or mitigation. The sentence was inflicted. Could a gen- 
tleman have proposed, or voted for so brutal an accumulation 
of pain, insult, mutilation and ruin, no matter what the funda- 
mental errors prevailing in penal law then were ? Nor have I se- 
lected this, from other sentences, for its peculiar cruelty. Every 
student of history knows that they were common at the time, 
against all who offended authority, even unknowingly. Com- 
pare the spirit which could overwhelm a victim with such bru- 
tality, and all the branding, pillory and whipping still existing 
in many countries, with the spirit of calmness, kindness, yet seri- 
ousness and dignity which pervades such a punitory scheme as 
the Pennsylvania eremitic penitentiary system, which for the 
very reason that it is gentlemanly, is the most impressive and 
penetrating, therefore the most forbidding of all 
4 



26 

Let me barely allude to the duties of the gentleman in those 
countries in which slavery still exists. Plato says,* genuine 
humanity and real probity are brought to the test, by the 
behaviour of a man to slaves, whom he may wrong with 
impunity. He speaks like a gentleman. Although his golden 
rule applies to all whom we may offend or grieve with impu- 
nity, and the fair and noble use of any power we may possess, 
is one of the truest tests of the gentleman, yet it is natural that 
Plato should have made the treatment of the slave the peculiar 
test, because slavery gives the greatest power. Cicero says 
we should use slaves no otherwise than we do our day- 
labourers.t 

The subject which I have chosen covers so extensive a 
ground, that it is difficult either to break off or to select the 
most important points. Give me leave, then, young gentlemen, 
to refer to but one more subject of practical importance, before 
I shall address to you my concluding remarks. It is the sub- 
ject of deriding others, so natural to untutored minds, yet so 
inconsistent with a truly gentlemanly spirit, because so painful, 
and generally so undeservedly painful, to those who are the 
objects of our deriding smiles. A very few reflections will 
show you that they are not agreeable to that genuine good 
nature, and still less conformable to that refinement of feeling 
which characterize the gentleman. Perhaps it will appear that 
he who laughs at others, shows that he deserves our pity more 
than the person laughed at. There is not a subject in the 
whole province of psychology which offers greater difficulties, 
possibly none that offers difficulties so great as that of laughing 
and the ridiculous. You will find that we feel tempted to 
smile, sometimes, even when our soul is filled with horror. 
We ought then to take care not to be betrayed into an act so 
little understood, when done at the cost of another, who may 
feel pained or humbled by our inadvertance. We may further 
say that every thing novel, which does not at once strike us as 
grand, sublime, or awful, inclines us first of all to smile. The 
advanced state of my address prevents me from giving you 
instances. You can easily, however, provide them for your- 






* De Legibus, lib. vi. edi. Bispont, viii. 203. 
f De Officiis, xiii. 



27 

selves. But if the fact be as I have stated, you will see at 
once that the smile, caused by everything novel, betrays as 
often our own ignorance as any better cause of our risibility. 
You ought, moreover, always to remember that every human 
action, perceptible by the senses, and which strikes us at all, 
causes us to laugh, if we are unacquainted with its antecedents, 
or if we see it out of connexion, unless an experienced mind 
and vivid imagination quickly supply the antecedents, or a well 
trained mind abstains from laughing at others or at striking 
things, as a general rule. Here, again, the ridiculous is not 
inherent in the phenomenon, but it is owing to him that laughs. 
To see, but not to hear, persons singing, is to all untutored 
minds ridiculous. Suddenly to find a man vehemently speak- 
ing and gesticulating strikes us as ridiculous, while, had we 
been present from the beginning, he might thrill our very souls 
by those same tones and gestures. Even marks of the tenderest 
affection fare no better in this respect, and what is more com- 
mon than the laughing of the uneducated at the accent of those, 
who, nevertheless, may have used great diligence and study to 
make themselves well understood in an idiom, all the difficul- 
ties of which they are unable to overcome, because they have 
not learned it on their father's knees, or from their mother's 
blessing lips, and most willingly would speak to you without 
any of those deviations at which you may smile, did it depend 
upon them. We frequently laugh at acts of our neighbors. 
Did we know all the antecedents, their whole education, their 
checkered lives, we should find nothing to laugh at, and at 
times, these very acts might make us weep indeed. It is a rule, 
therefore, of much practical importance for the gentleman never 
to laugh at others unless their pretension deserves it; but if he, 
in turn, be laughed at, he will remember that it is a common 
failing of which he has not always remained free, that placid 
good nature is a signal attribute of the gentleman, and that, if 
he have given real cause for laughter, there is no better means 
to deprive the laughter at us of all its sting, than freely to join 
in it. 

I have spoken of laughing at others only, not of laughing in 
general. He that can never heartily laugh can hardly have a 
heart at all, or must be of a heavy mind. A sound laugh at 



23 

the proper time is the happy music of a frank and confiding 
soul. It is the natural song which the Creator gave to man, 
and to man alone, in lieu of all the lovely tones which he pro- 
fusely granted to the warblers of the wood. 

But we must return to more serious subjects before I conclude. 
They shall be treated in two more remarks, the last with 
which I shall detain you. They will be very brief; but, young 
gentlemen, I invite your whole attention to them. Ponder 
them; for they are of momentous importance for your whole 
lives — important even to your country. 

" Habit is the best magistrate," was a wise dictum of Lord 
Bacon's. Merely mental acknowledgment of moral truth for- 
sakes you, when it becomes most important to apply it — in 
moments of great temptation, of irritation, of passion. If 
repeated and constant acting upon that truth has not produced 
a habit or grown into a virtue, it may be sufficiently strong to 
produce repentance after the offence, but not to guide when yet 
it can be avoided. Apply yourselves, then, sedulously at once 
to act habitually and constantly by the highest standard of the 
gentleman — to permeate your soul by a truly gentlemanly 
spirit. No better opportunity to practise this moral rule is 
given you than your present relation to your teachers. Let a 
truly gentlemanly tone subsist between you. You will not 
only make your life pleasant and sow the seeds of happy 
remembrance, but it will give new force and new meaning to 
the very instruction, for the reception of which you have come 
here, and it will best prepare you for establishing that relation 
which is one of the happiest, most fruitful and blessed that can 
subsist between man and man — I mean, friendship between the 
teacher and the taught — a relation of which we find so beau- 
tiful an example in Socrates and his followers, and so holy a 
model in Christ and his disciples — a relation which lends new 
strength to the mind to seize what is offered, and which, in a 
great measure, overcomes the difficulty of communion between 
soul and soul. For all language is but approximation to the 
subject to be expressed, and affection is the readiest, truest and 
richest interpreter of the ever-imperfect human word. Believe 
me, my young friends, however extensive the knowledge of 
your teacher, skillful his language, or ardent his zeal, and 



^%^_ ^^^^^^^^ 



29 

intense your attention may be, you will hear and learn far more, 
if affection toward him animates that attention, and you will 
integrate with your very soul that which, without friendship 
between you and him, remains matter of purely intellectual 
activity, liable to be superseded by successive layers of 
knowledge. 

If thus you make the character of the gentleman more and 
more your own, you will prepare yourselves in a manner, 
important among others, for the high and weighty trusts which 
await all of you as citizens of a commonwealth in which we 
enjoy a rare degree of personal liberty. I have shown you 
how closely connected the Character of the Gentleman is with 
a high standard of true civil liberty, but it is necessary to direct 
your mind, in addition, to the fact that there are difficulties in 
the way of attaining to this high end, peculiar to young Ameri- 
cans while yet it may be one of the problems, the solution of 
which is assigned to us by history, to develope the peculiar 
character of the high bred republica n gentle man as a pervading /' 
national type, as it has been that of/the monarchical gentleman. 
It is difficult for princes to imbibe the true spirit of the gentle- 
man, because their position and education naturally lead to the 
growth of selfishness; and so there are, on the other hand, 
obstacles in the way of carefully cultivating this character, 
peculiar to a country in which so great an amount of liberty is 
enjoyed by every individual as in ours. Suffrage is almost 
universal, and so far as the vote goes, all have equal weight; 
you see some persons rise to distinction, without any high claim 
to morality, religion, or gentlemanliness, and the powerholders, 
whether they be monarchs or the people, a few or many, ever 
listen to flattery. It is inherent in power; and it is a common 
belief, though I am firmly convinced of the contrary, that large 
masses are not flattered by gentlemanliness. Even if it were 
so, we would have no right to sacrifice so important a moral 
standard. Are we allowed to do any evil which we may yet 
be fully persuaded would promote our worldly interest ? But 
happily it is not so. Even the least educated have an instinc- 
tive regard for the high bred gentleman, however they may 
contemn various counterfeits of the gentleman, especially the 
dandy; and the acknowledgment on the part of a whole com- 



30 

munity that a man is a gentleman, gives him a hold on them 
most important in all matters of action. Adhere to it. If you 
see others rise above you by practices which you contemn, you 
must remember that it is one of the very attributes of the gen- 
tleman, to stand alone when occasion requires it, in dignity and 
self-possession, without conceit, but conscious that he has acted 
right, honorably, gentlemanly.* Distrust every one who would 
persuade you to promote your interest by descending. The 
elementary law of all progress, be it religious, mental, political 
or industrial is, that those who have some talent or skill or 
knowledge in advance of others, should draw those after them, 
and make them rise. This is the truly democratic law of uni- 
ted advancement, in which every one leads in whatever he 
can lead. All else is suspicious aristocracy — the aristocracy of 
a few, or the aristocracy of the low, if aristocracy is marked, as 
I think it is, by undue privilege, which is unbefitting to every 
one and all, be they the few, or the many. Scan history and 
you will find that throughout the annals of civilization this 
uniform law prevails, that a favoured mind perceives a truth, 
gives utterance to it, is first disbelieved, derided or attacked, 
perhaps called upon to seal the truth with his death, but the 
truth is not lost; it is diffused into the minds of the very detrac- 
ted, it diffuses itself, and in so doing is modified; it collects 
votaries sufficient to form a minority, and at length the minori- 
ty swells into a majority, which ultimately establishes the prin- 
ciple in practice; so that the whole process has consisted in men 
being drawn up to the truth. It requires patience and gentle- 
manly forbearance, but is not God the most patient of all? 
You cannot point out a single vast movement of mankind 
towards an essential improvement, which does not serve as an 
illustration of the law I have just stated to you. 

And now, gentlemen, at the very moment of writing these 
last words, I received the speech of Sir Robert Peel on the 30th 
of June, in which he explains the reasons of his resignation 
and his defeat in parliament, after having happily passed the 



* The importance of the character of the gentleman in politics, especially in 
the legislative assembly and in the representative in general, has been more fully 
discussed by me in the chapters on the Duties of the representative in the second 
volume of Political Ethics. 



31 

free corn trade bill, and as the reader is referred in some works 
to a diagram at the end of the volume, so shall I conclude by 
pointing to that manly speech as a practical illustration of much 
that I have said on the conduct of the gentleman in politics. 
Outvoted in parliament, discarded by the party with whom he 
came into office, and seeing his successor in power, influence 
and honors before him, he still speaks of his whole portion, his 
antagonists and his former friends now turned into bitter ene- 
mies, with calmness, dignity and cheerful liberality, allowing 
that in a constitutional country, the loss of power ought to be 
the natural consequence of a change of opinion upon a vital 
party question, while he yet rejoices at having thus come to 
different and better views upon so essential a point as that of 
the daily bread of the toiling many, and frankly ascribes the 
chief merit of this most momentous progress to a gentleman* 
who belongs to a sphere of politics totally different from that 
in which he himself has been accustomed to move. It is a 
gentlemanly speech, leaving a corresponding impression in his 
own country and throughout ours, conciliating, and command- 
ing respect as the effect of a conduct truly gentlemanly always 
will be where civilization dwells among men. 



*Mr. R. Cobden, member of Parliament, and leader of the Anti-Corn Law 
League, has deserved well of mankind. There is but one omission in Sir Robert 
Peel's speech, with which we might feel tempted to find fault. No one, I believe, 
feels greater admiration for Mr. Cobden' s wise and energetic course — which, in- 
deed, procured him the offer of a place in the British Cabinet — than myself; but 
even his labours, and those of the League, would have remained unavailing for a 
long time yet, it would seem, had not Divine Wisdom resolved to send at this 
precise juncture the pressing potato rot, and thus aided one of the greatest ad- 
vancements of mankind, to come to maturity. The historian must mention, to- 
gether with Cobden and the League, the potato rot. 



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